The Saga of Genealogy.us.org and Ancestor.us.org

My feelings about these two websites that I wrote two posts about previously are strong and simple – anger, frustration and dismay! I don’t take kindly to intimidation and it seems that I’m being subjected to it by the staff at these websites.

The very next morning after writing the first post, I awoke to this email:

Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2013 08:36:16 -0500
Subject: Genealogy.us.org and Ancestor.us.org
From: josh@myinfobill.com
To: christineblythe500@hotmail.com

Dear Christine,

I am writing to ask you to immediately remove the blogs about the websites Genealogy.us.org and Ancestor.us.org located at these URLs: http://www.emptynestancestry.com/2013/01/13/genealogy-us-org-is-ancestry-us-org-too/ and http://www.emptynestancestry.com/2013/01/10/is-genealogy-us-org-a-scam-sure-seems-like-it/

If you have purchased our services and are unsatisfied with the records you have received I can offer you a refund if you email me back the email address you signed up with on the websites, your full name, zip code and order IDs for each website.

Otherwise, please again I ask you to immediately remove these defaming blog posts or we will be forced to pursue legal matters regarding these claims.

Kind Regards,

Josh Fraser

Customer Service Manager

To this I replied:

From: “Christine Blythe” <christineblythe500@hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2013 10:40am
To: “josh@myinfobill.com” <josh@myinfobill.com>
Subject: RE: Genealogy.us.org and Ancestor.us.org

I will not remove these posts. There is nothing defaming about them. They are my exact experience – so similar to numerous other experiences I’ve had on numerous other ‘scam’ sites. I’m sick and tired of those who are getting onto the genealogy ‘bandwagon’ to make a quick buck at the expense of us who invest considerable time and money in this hobby.

If you were to change it to a more straightforward system where we pay our $1 and get the records, without being linked off into nowhere chasing nothing, I would gladly check it out, write an updated post, and remove these posts if they are no longer true.

Christine Blythe

This morning I awoke to a response from my return email:

Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2013 11:08:10 -0500
Subject: RE: Genealogy.us.org and Ancestor.us.org
From: josh@myinfobill.com
To: christineblythe500@hotmail.com

Dear Christine,

I apologize for how you feel about our websites but I can assure you we are not a “scam.” Since you will not remove the web posts I will be forced to take action. I will be relaying these blogs to our legal team this afternoon or tomorrow morning and I will update you with any decisions they make.

Thank you,

Josh Fraser

Again, while doing my morning reading and research, I came upon this very good and detailed post from Genea-Musings about the genealogy.us.org site. Be sure to read the comment by Thomas McEntee of GeneaBloggers in which he describes what he found when he checked the ‘Terms and Conditions’ (small print) of these sites. It really does pay to be careful and read the small print.